Radical innovation: crossing knowledge boundaries with ...

In a later article on the subject Nowotny states that transdisciplinarity entails
contributing “to a joint problem solving that is more than just juxtaposition; more than
just laying one discipline along side another” (Nowotny 2007:1), and argues that in
‘Mode 2’ knowledge has become more ‘transgressive’, travelling across different
institutions and structures, and between science and society.
A transdisciplinary mode consists in a continuous linking and relinking, in
specific clusterings and configurations of knowledge which is brought
together on a temporary basis in specific contexts of application’ (Gibbons
et al. 1994:29).
In transdisciplinary contexts, disciplinary boundaries, distinctions between
pure and applied research, and institutional differences between say,
universities and industry, seem to be less and less relevant’ (Gibbons et al.
1994:30).
The emergence of trandsciplinary knowledge will, Gibbons, Nowotny et al. argue,
require new forms of quality control, as the new fusion of expertise and knowledge
cannot be judged according to the conventions of the antecedent disciplines. But
transdisciplinary knowledge also offers great opportunities for participation in a
knowledge economy, and in particular they argue that new forms of quality control
will have to acknowledge the way in which social value not only makes science more
accountable but also leads to better technical solutions.
The notion of transdisciplinarity is most notable for the way in which it conflates the
exchange of knowledge across disciplines (what is traditionally referred to as
interdisciplinarity) with both the involvement of future users in the research process
and the breakdown of a separation between universities and other institutions.
However, in this useage the concept of interdisciplinarity is at risk of losing the very
specificity from which its value in generating innovation might be deduced. In the
policy literature reviewed above the focus tends to be on innovation, and differences
between interdisciplinarity and other forms of collaborative research are rarely
explicated. In this context interdisciplinarity is at risk of becoming abstracted as an
index of collaboration in general, which is in turn taken for granted as an index of
innovation, without the specificity of these relationships being drawn out. This is
particularly true of Nowotny et al’s model of transdisciplinarity insofar as this concept
begins to stand for the entire shift in the production of knowledge at a societal level,
rather than referring to specific methodological processes.
Attempts to define the methodological characteristics of interdisciplinary research in
the academic literature often involve a focus on the distinction between multi- and
inter- disciplinarity, as representing a distinction between ‘juxtaposition’ and
‘integration’ respectively. For example, in a contribution to a recent internet forum on
interdisciplinarity, Diane Rhoten claimed that much interdisciplinarity is a trend
rather than a transition (Rhoten 2007). She argues that much of what is claimed to be
interdisciplinarity is actually people working in isolation on different parts of a
project. There is no integration of different disciplines or “reconceptualization and
Innovation and Interdisciplinarity 105